With battery powered user equipments (UEs), there is always a need to reduce power consumption in the UEs so as to increase battery life. In order to improve battery life, when the user equipment is not in an active mode of operation (i.e., not transmitting or receiving traffic information, such as SMS, video multi-media or voice data in a voice or data call), the UE enters an power saving mode of operation, during which some of the components of the UE are powered off to save battery power. During this mode, the components of the UE that are required to monitor the signalling signals from a network entity will still consume power but this is small compared to the power consumption by the UE during the active time.
In a wireless communication technology such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), UEs employ discontinuous reception to conserve battery power. DRX operation allows UEs to enter power save mode during regular intervals and wake up at specific time instances to receive data packets from a network entity (e.g., base station). Generally, the DRX operation is defined by an active period and a sleep period. A combination of active period and sleep period is known as one DRX cycle. The length of the active period indicates time duration for which the UE should operate in wake up mode and the length of the sleep period indicates time duration for which the UE should operate in the power saving mode. The sum of active period length and the sleep period length is known as a DRX cycle length. Typically, a network entity determines a length of a DRX cycle considering quality of service requirements of a service activated in the UE.